


Beyond Pain and Death and Fear

by linndechir



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Seduction to the Dark Side, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:40:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25616758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/pseuds/linndechir
Summary: Jon doesn’t know anything but what he Sees, and under the watchful Eye that fills the entire sky with its glorious presence, he Sees so much. All of it terrible. All of it beautiful.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 7
Kudos: 78
Collections: Rare Male Slash Exchange 2020





	Beyond Pain and Death and Fear

**Author's Note:**

  * For [winternacht](https://archiveofourown.org/users/winternacht/gifts).



> This is canon-divergent for all of season 5 and goes off in a bit of a different direction right after the season 4 finale. I hope you enjoy it, dear recipient. :)

Jon does not know if he’s asleep or awake.

He does not know if there’s still a difference between these things in this new world of constant nightmares. He doesn’t know how much time has passed, if any time has passed, if time still matters at all. He doesn’t know anything but what he Sees, and under the watchful Eye that fills the entire sky with its glorious presence, he Sees so much. All of it terrible. All of it beautiful.

He should do something, he thinks at times. He, or maybe just the man he was before the Eye opened. It feels like such a very long time ago. He should get up, he should go somewhere, do something. He doesn’t know that it would change anything, and even if it did, he’s not sure he could. There is too much to see, a torrent of fear filling his senses and his entire body to the brim until he’s overflowing with it and still desperate for more. Why would he walk anywhere when he can see it all from here, wherever here is? Why would he ever do anything but watch and see and remember? A living chronicle of terror, Elias had called him, and Jon feels like he is only truly understanding now what that means.

He doesn’t think it’s the first time he hears Elias’ voice in all this – Elias’ presence has been _there_ ever since his words tumbled from Jon’s lips and called this world into being. Jon knows he should have resisted him more, but he’d had to know what was going to happen. He’d had to see. And this whole world tastes of Elias now, even that Eye in the sky has a greenish tint when Jon squints a little, although he knows that is either coincidence or his imagination. The entities do not care for their servants, no matter how powerful, no matter how successful. But Elias has fed the Eye more than any avatar had ever fed their master in the history of mankind, and that alone must give him a power Jon feels in every cell of his being.

But this time it’s different. It’s not an echo, or a memory, not something he Knows without knowing why. This time it’s much simpler, more human than that. A voice in his ear. 

“I thought you might come to me yourself, Jon, but you do seem intent on spending eternity sitting in this cabin. It really isn’t befitting your station in this new world.”

Elias doesn’t sound any different. Jon feels like he should – oh, it’s the true Elias (Jonah, his old self wants to correct, as if the name made a difference, as if the name was who Elias was), smug and arrogant and unrelenting, and not the harmless bureaucrat he once played so convincingly. But it’s still Elias, not some many-voiced, many-eyed monster from Jon’s nightmares. How much easier all of this would have been if Elias had been more of a monster. If Jon had managed to hate him more.

Elias doesn’t ask his permission when he takes him away, and Jon is glad for it. He would have had to say no, to send him away, and he fears that Elias might have obeyed. And then Jon would have been alone in this beautiful nightmare of his own making, and no matter how much he enjoys it, he knows he couldn’t have borne it forever. Briefly, he wonders what Peter Lukas would have made of that – how much he would have loved the thought of Jon all alone and abandoned, after he’d driven away anyone who might have stayed by his side to enjoy what he’d wrought.

But for once Elias is kind to him and doesn’t give Jon another horrible choice to make. He puts an arm around Jon and helps him walk, always so deceptively strong. He’d never looked like a man who could beat someone to death, but then that had been before Jon had learnt not to underestimate him. 

They walk, though Jon doesn’t know how long, until they’re home.

Home, he thinks, but what his eyes see is the Institute, the Archive. Not Jon’s flat, nor Elias’, where Jon had only been that one time he tries not to think about. Where else would they have gone, after all? Where else do they both truly belong?

It’s all a blur – not because he doesn’t know enough, but because he knows too much, and maybe even after all this his mind is still too human to process omniscience. He wonders how long it took Elias to learn – so he simply asks him. There’s a hot bath and warm food, although Jon doesn’t think either of them still needs to eat, but it tastes good and the hot water relaxes muscles he hadn’t realised were so tense. He should be more embarrassed, sprawled out and naked in clear water, no soap and foam to hide him from Elias’ gaze. But Elias sees all, like Jon sees all, and the thought of trying to hide from him feels absurd. So Jon merely watches him back – the sleeves of his shirt rolled up to his elbows, his hands warm as he pets Jon’s bony knee where it peeks out of the water, his eyes brighter than Jon has ever seen them before.

Jon asks him how long it took him and sees Elias shudder in delight. No hesitation, no pause before he replies, more details spilling from his lips than he ever offered Jon in his past life. In the world before, where some things were still hidden from the Eye and those it had claimed for itself. This being Elias, it’s still a useless reply – weeks, months, what did it matter? Jon will do better, he says, because seeing all this world has to offer is in his nature.

That night – if days and nights still have any real meaning, if they still happen in regular intervals and not merely as a function of people’s fears – Jon falls asleep in the bathtub. He dreams of every statement giver he’s ever spoken to, whose nightmares he still haunts in this world every time they close their eyes to rest from the new fears hounding them. And he dreams of people he’s never seen before, screaming their terror into this endless world of fear, and waiting, waiting for Jon to find them so he can Know every last agonised scream of their breaking minds. He awakens in a larger bed than he’s ever seen in his life, achingly hard and with Elias’ hand on his cock and that delighted smile pressed against his lips.

Jon knows he should tell him to stop. He knows that he could _make_ him stop now. He doesn’t.

At some point, Jon thinks he should look for the others. And it’s not that he doesn’t care, oh, he does, and it hurts in ways he’s almost given up hope would ever stop hurting. But he knows what he’ll find – not the details of it, but what matters. They’ll be hurt and terrified. Like the whole world is hurt and terrified. And there is nothing Jon can do to change it, to help them, to save them. He condemned them the moment he let Elias fill his mouth and his tongue and his mind. 

The least he can do, he decides, is not look and gorge himself on their fear and their suffering, and he wonders how long that distinction will still matter to him. 

“Why did you bring me here?” Jon asks – some time later, if time has passed. His senses are still awash with fear, but somehow it’s easier to sort through here. The point is not the Institute, but the Panopticon, he Knows. Like a focal point, a lens through which they can watch the world. It makes it easier to think, easier to process the terrors his mind so greedily laps up. It has finally stopped feeling like the ocean his mind reaches into is crushing him, and more like he’s swimming through it as easily as a shark, following every delicious drop of blood (and in this new world, the ocean is awash with blood, yet Jon can still taste and savour ever drop like the finest wine).

“You belong here,” Elias replies. He always replies now when Jon asks him anything, and it barely takes Jon any effort anymore. His questions are commands, and even the king of this new world bows to them. Jon wishes it didn’t thrill him so much. Elias lets out a deep, content sigh – if Jon enjoys making him speak, then not half as much as Elias likes it when Jon forces him. “This is our world. You helped me make it, so I don’t see why I wouldn’t share a little. And I did make it for myself – I’m not going to pretend otherwise – but it is yours as much as mine, my dear Archive.”

They’re watching together, staring out over a vastness that must please Simon Fairchild and his ilk, wherever they are. Elias is so close – he always is these days, and Jon couldn’t say if Elias is drawn to him or the other way around. He isn’t sure there’s still a difference.

Elias’ eyes are wide and all-seeing, staring at Jon through the Eye in the sky even as they look outside. “There is so much here for you to record, and I want to see it all. _You_ want to see it all.”

Jon knows it’s futile, and he argues mostly out of an old, useless habit.

“I didn’t want this to happen.”

“Now we both know that isn’t true, Jon,” Elias says in that terrible, patient tone that makes Jon want to reach inside him and pull out whatever terrors made Elias who he is. Whatever fears drove him to rip out his own eyes (those cold, intense eyes that have been haunting Jon for so long) and put them into the first of his endless parade of new bodies, like something out of the Stranger’s nightmares. Jon wonders idly if Elias will still age in this new world, if one day he’ll find himself another vessel to carry his eyes and his mind – and instead of horror Jon feels curiosity, imagines what it would feel like if Elias looked younger than him, smiling that self-satisfied smile from a fresh young face as he buries himself in Jon’s body and his mind.

Jon looks away, but Elias presses on – he’s rarely shown Jon any mercy, after all, rarely allowed him to hide from what he has become. “I could hardly have made you read that statement. You wanted to. So you might as well enjoy the result.”

Jon already is, and they both know it. He doesn’t have the strength to fight it anymore, and as he looks out over the changed world at his feet, it’s hard to remember why he ever wanted to. What difference does it make now? All he can do is record the past, not undo it.

Elias’ hand touches his shoulder then, and he leans in until his lips almost touch Jon’s neck. His body is still human enough to shiver in response – at times he could forget he has a body at all, but when he does, his nerves are always set alight by the endless torrent of fear moving through him. Elias knows. Elias understands what it does to Jon, what Jon needs from him. For now he doesn’t touch him more than that, but his mind is pushing at Jon’s – not invading it like he used to, but simply brushing against it until Jon sighs and lets him in. Insidious, as Elias has always been. He’s never had to force Jon – he only opened doors for him and Jon ran through every one of them. 

Merciless. Utterly merciless.

Elias’ mind feels far more orderly than the chaos of Jon’s own, and of course Elias has had centuries of seeing all he wants to see and still finding the mental capacity for polite water cooler conversations and spreadsheets. It’s a soothing balm, to let himself see what Elias sees right now. Endless blue sky and someone falling, falling under the watchful Eye, and a small, withered old figure winking up at it in careless delight. Fire raging greedily, ripping apart a building, the falling pillars and walls burying people in the stiflingly hot air as two fears rip at a screaming young man, each outdoing the other in their attempt to destroy him first. The unbearable agony of legs that have been running for hours, for days, forever, because every time they slow down something nips at their heels and though they don’t know what’s chasing them, they know that nothing could be worse than what it will do once it catches up.

It’s filtered through Elias’ mind like a prism, clear and beautiful and so intense Jon’s lips part in a moan. His skin prickles when Elias steps closer to him, wraps his arms around Jon’s waist and rests his chin on Jon’s shoulder. He’s hard, and as Jon feels it, he Knows it too – from his own mind or from Elias’, he isn’t sure anymore. Elias’ hot arousal shudders through him, and his own response is almost immediate, even before Elias’ hand slips lower to press against his stomach.

“You belong here,” Elias whispers again, and this time Jon cannot make himself object. “Watching with me. Seeing all that you helped me create. A king should have a throne. A god a temple.”

Elias strokes over Jon’s chest, parting his shirt to pet skin that feels far more sensitive than it should. Jon doesn’t feel like a king, or a god. He still feels almost drunk on these nightmares he created, on their beauty when he sees them through Elias’ eyes, on the inescapable knowledge that they will always share this hell they called into the world. 

Something itches under Jon’s skin, twitches and shifts as Elias caresses it. It barely hurts, not compared to the phantom pain in Jon’s scars on some days, in his burnt hand or his flayed back. No, this feels right, almost comfortable, as if something he’d held back for too long finally found its natural shape. Another moan escapes his lips when a small, green eye blinks to life right in the hollow between his collarbones, wide and hungry, and Jon Knows without a doubt that its first look at the world is shared by Elias, nestled comfortably in Jon’s body and looking out through him. That, too, feels right, as right as Elias’ mind feeding what it sees right back into Jon’s head.

Wrapped into each other like this, Jon realises that it is not Elias alone – the many-eyed monster that watches this world. It’s always been Jon, too, the Watcher and his Archivist, devouring the world and each other and all the fears that only live to please them now.

It’s terrible, and beautiful, and as Jon finally opens all his eyes, he feels nothing but joy.


End file.
